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“It’s so nice to be out on the water with my grandson,” Herb said.
“He’s taught me everything I know,” Jack affirmed.
“You’ll have to take me out sometime,” Eloise suggested, surprising herself with how forward she was.
“We’d love it!” Herb said.
“Just say the word, and we’ll clear the schedule for the day,” Jack said.
“Maybe we should all go,” Harriet chimed in. “I haven’t been out on the water in a while. That Daffodil Festival nearly killed me this year.”
“Thank goodness it’s over,” Margot agreed.
“I get to take a few months off before I have to start planning for next year,” Harriet explained. “I plan to make the most of my time off.”
As the evening light dimmed to grays and blues and the air shimmered with spring chill, Eloise and Harriet gathered the empty pizza boxes and the empty cups and deposited them in the kitchen.
“Am I doing okay?” Eloise asked her daughter, surprised at her own naivety.
“You’re wonderful!” Harriet squeezed Eloise’s arm. “My kids love you.”
“Probably not yet,” Eloise said. “But hopefully, they’ll find a way to love me. Or at least put up with me.” She laughed.
But Harriet shook her head. “I know you went through hell when you were younger.” She paused, swallowed, then added, “I just hope you can find a way to be kinder to yourself in your head. You deserve kindness, Mom, both from the world and yourself.”
Eloise was struck by how profound this sounded.Why had it never occurred to her that the voice in her head could be so monstrous?
Soon, Harriet and her children prepared to leave, all promising that they’d return to Eloise’s little cottage soon.
“I imagine we’ll find excuses to pop by frequently,” Harriet said as she hugged Eloise.
“I make cookies,” Eloise told her grandchildren, remembering how jealous she’d been of Brenda back in Indiana, who’d baked for her grandchildren.
“We love cookies,” Margot assured her as she hugged her.
For a long moment, Herb and Eloise stood on the porch and watched as Harriet drove her children away from the house. All of the grandchildren waved through the windows, and Harriet honked her horn just before they disappeared behind a wall of trees.
And when they were finally gone, Eloise collapsed in a chair and burrowed her face in her hands.
“Hey! Hey.” Herb sat beside her and placed his hand on her upper back. “Eloise, it’s okay. It went so well! Didn’t you think so?”
But how could Eloise explain what she felt? She felt so excited, so terribly pleased, that she wasn’t sure how to say anything without bursting into tears. When she finally removed her hands from her face, all she could do was grin up at Herb like a very happy fool.
“I’m sorry,” she said very quietly. “That entire dinner was just beyond my wildest dreams.”
Herb laughed. “Mine, too.”
Herb stood to grab them two more beers, which they popped out on the porch of the cabin where Eloise would spend the next years of her life. For a little while, they drank in silence, enjoying the beauty of one another’s company.
Beneath the surface of the silence, Eloise felt the air thicken with apprehension. Although she didn’t dare to hope for it, not really, she sensed something when Herb looked at her. It was as though they were fifteen again, preparing for their very first kiss.
With that first kiss, their entire lives had been uprooted, their world had shifted on its axis, and Eloise had been taken away from her family and left to stir in decades of self-hatred.
But, Eloise thought now, the love between Herb and Eloise had never been the problem. That had been the most nourishing thing she’d known.
Eloise lifted her eyes to Herb’s and found that he’d been studying her, too.
“What are you looking at?” Eloise asked with a laugh.
